How did President Obama’s speech to school children affect your school?

Last week, as news of the President’s plan to address students today began to circulate, many Americans voiced support for, and concerns about, his planned speech. To be certain, this issue brought to the surface some of the deep political divisions in our country.

I’m sure the nightly news, the Internet, and tomorrow’s newspapers will be filled with stories about the broadcast, but I’m interested to hear, first-hand from educators, their perspectives on the address. For example, I’d like to know:

How did you handle the broadcast of the President’s message in your school?

What did you do after the broadcast? Did you prepare a lesson plan related to the broadcast? (Was this a “teachable moment” in your view?)

How did students (and their parents) respond to the message?

How did you view the message? Was it a welcome “pep talk” from the President… or an unwanted distraction?

Please post responses to these questions directly to this blog. Thank you.

3 Comments

How did you handle the broadcast of the President’s message in your school?
Well we were told Thursday afternoon that if we wanted to show it in our district we had to give the kids a permission slip and plan alternate activities for students who did not have permission. As you might imagine in a middle school classroom creating, passing out, and collecting permission slips for anything is a challenge. I simply did not have time to do this or plan alternate activities. Nor did I have a place for the other students who could not watch to go to without major disruptions. Since it was left to individual teachers at our school it was not shown in any class.
My plan was to do a live blogging discussion with other students but I could not make it happen which was a disappointment to me to pass up an opportunity. But for as many emails as we recieved from parents not one student asked me about it.
• What did you do after the broadcast? Did you prepare a lesson plan related to the broadcast? (Was this a “teachable moment” in your view?)
• How did students (and their parents) respond to the message?
• How did you view the message? Was it a welcome “pep talk” from the President… or an unwanted distraction?

After watching the speech, my students wrote goals for themselves for the school year. I had them write 3 long term goals for school in general, then they wrote 3 more goals specifically about what they wanted to achieve in my class. I then hung the goals on a bulletin board so that they can look back from time to time.

Believe it or not, my high school would NOT allow us to televise it. I teach in an extremely conservative (right-wing) community and although the administration promised we could play a recorded copy later in the week for the students. When it came to actually providing the few of us teachers with copies, they had every reason in the world why it was not available… insane and pathetically sad. I am a small voice of change and support for our President Obama… it is a lonely place to be… but someone’s got to stand for what’s right… right?